things you see in a back alley
by j. alfred prufrock
Summary: Amber is waiting at his dumpster three hours after the curtain and Mag and Nathan and Rotti fell. 863 words, Amber/Graverobber.


**Disclaimer:** None of this belongs to me.

-

Amber is waiting at his dumpster three hours after the curtain (and Mag and Nathan and Rotti) fell. One of Pavi's old faces is haphazardly grafted to her own and her hair is falling around it like a brown curtain.

Like an amber curtain, he thinks and doesn't say so. He waits for her to speak.

He waits for three minutes before she does.

"Hey," she says, her voice quiet. She looks up at him and blinks.

She does not tell him what happened, because she knows (she _knows_) that he knows.

Graverobber sighs. "Need a hit?" He goes for his bag, his gun and his vials of Zydrate.

Amber chews her bottom lip. "Maybe later." She touches her cheek and he realizes that she's wiping away a tear.

Tentatively, he brushes her hair away from her face. In the dim firelight from the trashcan, he can see that this face is pale with large, full red lips and slanting eyes. Amber alternates between biting her lower lip and clenching her jaw.

She speaks again, her voice shaky:

"He said I'm not his daughter."

He doesn't really know what to say to that. "Oh," is what he finally manages.

Amber sniffles. "Fuck him, though, you know? I don't need that shit." She taps the pointy toes of her shiny black boots together and lets out a shuddering sigh. "I'm better than that. I did – I did more for that shitstain than those fuckers Pavi and Luigi did. I mean – " she scoffs, "I set up the Zydrate Support Network. That – that you know, that brought us some publicity. Some good publicity, I mean. Luigi and Pavi brought us bad publicity. I - _I_ was the only good child."

Graverobber listens to her and doesn't tell her that she may have invented the Zydrate Support Network but she certainly didn't uphold its policies.

She is trembling now, teeth chattering and she draws her knees to her chest and hugs them.

And she looks so small, so helpless, so _lost_ that Graverobber asks, "Do you want my coat?"

Big, artificial blue eyes blink up at him, swollen, red and dripping. "Huh?"

"You're shaking," he clarifies and his voice is low and rumbling in his chest.

"Oh." She doesn't seem to know how to answer, so he takes off the coat anyway and drapes it over her before wrapping an arm around her, holding her tightly against him.

(Oh, does this mean he loves her?)

(No, of course not. Graverobber doesn't love, especially not Amber Sweet the drug-addicted scalpel slut with delusions of grandeur.)

(He just feels sorry for her, that's all.)

(Graverobber has a heart, after all. He's one of the last people with a real one on this fucking island.)

She rests her head on his shoulder and she sighs heavily. "I just don't get why he'd give all of GeneCo to that little brat anyway, though. She was what, fourteen?"

"Seventeen," Graverobber answers, absentmindedly when he realizes he's been idly stroking her hair.

He stops and rests his hand where her shoulder meets her neck.

"Yeah, whatever. I at least went to college. I know how businesses run. What does that little bitch know about finances?"

"You went to college?" he asks, taken aback.

Amber glances at him. She snorts. "Why does everyone find that so fucking surprising? Yes, I went to college and I fucking graduated. I wasn't the top of my class, but I was in the top fifth percentile. My father – " she spits the last word, "got my a private tutor to make sure I passed." She laughs darkly and shakes her head. "I'm not stupid, you know."

Graverobber does, in fact, know this. Amber once told him that she let people think she was dumb because then she could take them by surprise.

(That's the thing about Amber: she's full of surprises.)

(He finds it sexy, if he's honest.)

(He's not.)

He doesn't notice that now she has her arms wrapped around his waist and she's practically sitting in his lap. "Daddy thought I was stupid," she whispers and she bursts into tears. "He thought I was – I was stupid and embarrassing and useless. He preferred a little teenager with no hair to me. I did – I did e-everything I could to make him happy. But that was never enough for him."

Awkwardly, he holds her against him and rubs her back to calm her down. Her tears soak his shirt and wet his skin, burning him and he smoothes her hair. If he were a different person, he would tell her something nice, tell her that Rotti loved her and he was proud of her now.

(Graverobber doesn't lie, though and he's not that man. He can't be.)

Instead, he says, "Do you want that hit now?"

She nods pathetically. "I don't have any credits on me, though."

He shakes his head. "It's on me."

Moving her hair away from her neck, she tilts her head back and he presses the gun to her neck and shoots it.

Right before she passes out, she murmurs, "Thanks for listening."

He smiles at her, a little sad. "No problem."

-

end


End file.
